Ancient Egyptian Day

After the success of Minecraft Day, it was time for our second themed day of the summer holidays - Ancient Egyptian Day. This was Harry's choice, inspired by having studied Ancient Egypt at school last term, and he had some ideas of his own. In fact I found so much to do that Ancient Egyptian Day actually spilled over into the weekend and inspired our activities for several days!

As usual, I set up our dining table with some of our favourite Ancient Egypt books and my little cat statue that my parents brought me back from Egypt after I regretted not buying one after our own trip. The night before I printed out a set of Ancient Egypt Matching Flash Cards (Twinkl subscriber resource). This is a set of cards which make up text and image pairs. I stuck them up all around the house. The children loved spotting them when they came down to breakfast, and when they had finished we played a mad matching game which involved them tearing about the house trying to match up the cards - they loved it!

They were ready for some quiet activities after that, so I settled them down with an Ancient Egypt Wordsearch (Twinkl subscriber resource) and a Design an Ancient Egyptian Death Mask printable (Twinkl subscriber resource). Mia in particular really loved this activity, she spent ages making sure that her mask was symmetrical.

While she was getting on with it Harry spent time reading his Explore 360: The Tomb of Tutankhamun (affiliate link) book which we received to review a little while ago. Unfortunately the free app is no longer available. 

Then we moved onto our baking activity and made some gingerbread mummy biscuits. I used a reduced version of my own recipe which makes about 12 mummy biscuits. When the biscuits had cooled we used a spoon to drip white icing over the biscuits to form stripes like bandages - they looked brilliant and were delicious!

Our next craft was another mummy one - making our own mummy models. This idea came from a great book that Harry received for his birthday - Egyptian Things to Make and Do (affiliate link). The book is packed with crafts to do with Ancient Egypt which all use materials that are readily available and are really imaginative. The mummies were made using tin foil pieces, scrunched up and placed together to form the shape of a person and a cat, then covered with more in foil to hold everything together firmly. Then the children used thin strips of kitchen roll, dipped in water and wrapped around like bandages.

When they were dry I painted them with a slightly diluted mixture of PVA glue to keep everything stuck down firmly. They really enjoyed making their mummies and it was interesting to see how the bandages had to be positioned to wrap the bodies most efficiently.

All this mummification reminded Harry of something that he'd done at school - mummifying a tomato. I found some simple instructions online and we gave it a go. You basically just scoop out the inside of the tomato, give it a wash, pack it with salt to preserve it, then leave it somewhere warm and dark. Ours is currently sitting in the airing cupboard, I'll be checking in a few days to see what has happened to it!

After lunch we had a go at playing the Ancient Egyptian game of Senet, using another printable from Twinkl - Ancient Egyptian Board Game Senet (Twinkl subscriber resource). The game involves throwing sticks to determine how many spaces to move your counters, and racing to move all your counters off the board, with lots of extra goes, swapping, and safe spaces. It was a bit complicated to start with but we worked it out and it was a lot of fun to play!

It was time for more crafting, and we decided to attempt some headbands. Harry found one in a book that he wanted to try but it was a bit complicated, so we used this Egyptian Snake Head Band printable (Twinkl subscriber resource). It was simple to put together and looks really good! There are also some other fab papercrafting printables over at Twinkl, you can make a Mummy, a Pyramid and a Sphinx (Twinkl subscriber resources).

Then Harry pulled out a hieroglyph chart and ruler that he bought on a trip to the British Museum. The ruler has a stencil for drawing the different hieroglyphs, and he loves writing little messages.

While he was doing that I began to work on some cases for their mummies, again using instructions from the Egyptian Things to Make and Do (affiliate link) book. You make a basic shape for the case using a shaped piece of cardboard and a cardboard strip taped up the sides. I gave the case several coats of white paint to cover up the printing, then left overnight to dry.

The next day we covered the cardboard cases with papier mache made from white tissue paper and glue. This made sure that the edges were covered evenly and the whole thing had a smooth finish. Then we painted them with a gold coloured acrylic paint. When it was all dry the children decorated them using stickers from the craft book and their own designs, with a hieroglyphic alphabet for some writing. I think they look pretty good!

Finally, we had to involve Minecraft in our themed day somehow. Harry set them both up in a desert landscape, and I challenged them to build a pyramid.

Our other themed days so far:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Dinosaur Day
Under the Sea Day
Beach Day
Disney Frozen Day (a guest post from my sister)
Roman Day
Transport Day
Australia Day
Minecraft Day

I have been provided with a Platinum Plus subscription to Twinkl in exchange for sharing their resources on my blog from time to time. Amazon links are affiliate.

Minecraft Day

If you've been reading my blog for a while you might remember that one of the things I like to do with the children in the holidays is to hold a Themed Day. This is a day where we choose a theme, and I come up with some crafts and activities related to that theme to entertain the children. It's been a while since our last one but the children are always asking for another, so we have a couple planned for the summer. Now the children are old enough to choose their own themes, and so Mia chose Minecraft Day and Harry chose Egyptian Day, which will be taking place in a couple of weeks. You can find links to our previous themed days at the bottom of this post.

Now when it comes to Minecraft Day, the obvious activity for the day is to play Minecraft. If I let them I think that the children would quite happily play Minecraft all day, so I was keen to come up with some other things to do that would keep them away from the screen! In the past I've always set up the table in the kitchen with some themed bits and pieces. I've been working quite a lot in the evenings lately and so I wasn't going to bother this time, but Harry asked me specifically whether I was going to as I was putting him to bed, so how could I refuse! I just piled up a few paper crafted blocks (more on those later) and some toys and books that were lying about, and put these cool Minecraft sunglasses that he got free with a magazine onto one of Mia's teddies.

We did start off by loading up the game. I found a brilliant Minecraft scavenger hunt that I could print out. The children can play Minecraft together from their different computers so they worked together to try and find all the items on the list and place them into a treasure chest. This actually took them a lot longer than I expected and they didn't manage to complete it during the day so it will keep them busy for ages, and they absolutely loved it! It was a completely new idea to them and I was really pleased with how much they enjoyed it, I need to do some research and come up with some more hunts for them to do together!

Then we turned off the computer and set to making some Minecraft biscuits. I have a very basic recipe for shortbread that I've been making for the children for years, all the way back to those very first iced biscuits. The difference was that this time Harry was able to measure out all the ingredients himself, much easier for me! We don't have a square cookie cutter so he used a knife to cut out some squares. When they had cooled we iced them with bright green icing (gel colours work best for this) and topped with green sprinkles.

After lunch we moved onto some quiet activities. I already mentioned the papercrafting - Harry has been given some fab Minecraft paper crafting activity sets. The sets come with lots of pre-cut printed shapes that you can pop out and assemble. Some, like the blocks, are very easy, and others are a bit more challenging. He's built some of them but has plenty left to go. He spent ages making some up, and then Mia played with them. We also found some printable Minecraft paper crafting on the Twinkl website which are available for subscribers. The Simple Adventurer Paper Model really was very simple and Mia could put him together easily. The Block Pig Paper Model is also very sweet, and Twinkl has a wide range of other Minecraft based paper crafting projects, including lots of different types of blocks.

Also from Twinkl the children enjoyed the Block Adventurer Addition Mosaic Activity Sheets, and there are subtraction sheets too. Also a Platinum Plus subscription resource, they are a grid of sums, and when you colour in the squares according to the answers a picture is revealed. There are also lots of free Minecraft colouring pages readily available online.

Then we had a long session of play with some of our Minecraft Lego sets. Harry has a few of these that are kept in a separate box to the rest of the Lego (I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to organising the Lego!) so they were able to spread the pieces out all over the floor and Harry concentrated on building the sets while Mia took the little figures out and played with those.

Finally I let them back onto the computers. I wanted to give their play a little structure so I downloaded this free Minecraft Challenge printable. It's January themed so the ideas are all winter and snowy related, but that didn't matter to the children! They had fun coming up with some new builds, and then they had another go at their Minecraft scavenger hunt.

When I was researching Minecraft build ideas I didn't find as many as I was expecting, so I'm going to ask the children to help me to come up with some different ideas that we can share on the blog to inspire other Minecrafters!

We really enjoyed our Minecraft day, it reminded me how much the children do love our themed days, I definitely need to plan a few more before they get too old!

For some more Minecraft themed ideas you might like my post with some Ideas for a Minecraft Themed Party. I also have a post with some tips on How to hold a themed day for children. And if you have a Minecraft player in the family you might enjoy my list of gift ideas for a Minecraft fan.

Our themed days so far:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Dinosaur Day
Under the Sea Day
Beach Day
Disney Frozen Day (a guest post from my sister)
Roman Day
Transport Day
Australia Day

I have been provided with a Platinum Plus subscription to Twinkl in exchange for sharing their resources on my blog from time to time.

Ideas for a themed Minecraft party

The other week Harry turned 7, and for his party this year I offered to host a Minecraft themed party. He was delighted with the idea, and so I did the best that I could to give him a fun party! It was the first time that we'd held a party for friends at our house so I was a little bit daunted, especially when we ended up with 16 children coming round, but it went really well, I had some great helpers, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

The planning started well before Christmas when I began coming up with ideas for Minecraft party bags. I was a little stumped at first, but once I got started I came up with lots of ideas, so many that you can find them all in a separate post - ideas for Minecraft party bag fillers.

The day before, we began decorating. I saw these fab balloon and crepe paper spiders over at Adventure Mummy and made one for the hallway and one over our fireplace.

I also bought green crepe paper in two different shades and cut long strips which I hung from our living room and study doors to make vines. These were very popular and after the party have been transferred to the children's bedrooms where they are still hanging! On the door you can also see the fab Minecraft pig which my friend's husband printed out for us. We used him to play Pin the Tail on the Pig with named strips of pink paper. I also hung bunches or green and black balloons around the house.

The part of the party that I found the most difficult was coming up with games to play. As well as the Pin the Tail on the Pig I did a pass the parcel and I made up a scavenger hunt by printing out and laminating Minecraft pictures which the children had to find hidden around the house. This was really popular!

We also played the chocolate game, where the children sit in a circle around a bar of chocolate and take it in turns to roll dice. If they rolled a six they had to put on a hat, scarf and gloves, then use a knife and fork to eat as much chocolate as they could. They managed really well with it!

I also printed out some Minecraft colouring sheets and left them on the coffee table with some colouring pencils and crayons (not felt tips!) and they were really popular. In our downstairs study I put out our large boxes of Lego and Duplo and this was also a good idea. It gave some of the quieter little ones somewhere that they could retreat to if they needed some peace.

For food and drink I went for standard party buffet fare. I did buy some cookies as I know that they are in Minecraft, and I also found some boxes of snacks in little block shapes like flapjacks which fitted the theme.

For the birthday cake, my friend made Harry this magnificent Minecraft cake. It's covered in little squares of fondant and it must have taken her ages! On top of the cake is a little Minecraft figure which fitted perfectly.

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Minecraft themed party bags

At the weekend I hosted a Minecraft birthday party for Harry and his friends. I was particularly pleased with the Minecraft themed party bags that I put together, so I thought that I'd share the details here.

When I started looking around I found it difficult to find Minecraft related toys that were reasonably priced and suitable for putting in party bags. I was a little bit stumped as I really wanted themed bags, but with a bit of looking around on Pinterest I found and came up with some ideas that I think worked well.

For the bags themselves I used green paper bags and drew a Creeper face on them using black marker pen. It's not my original idea, I'm afraid that I can't find an original source to credit for these as there are so many about.

Then we made a few things to put inside. First I printed out some bookmarks which are made using a free bookmark printable. Unfortunately the ones that I used are no longer available but there are lots out there so it's worth having a search. Our printer is pretty basic, so I printed the foldable versions onto paper and laminated them. Then I punched a hole in the bottom and threaded through some co-ordinating ribbon. I didn't recognise all the characters, but Harry assured me that his friends would!

I bought some cheap notebooks from Asda and printed out some Creeper faces. I glued these to a sheet of green card which I glued to the front of the notebook and then covered the whole thing with clear sticky backed plastic. I also added a black pencil in each which I also found in Asda.

Another item that we made was our Hama bead Minecraft keyrings. I was super proud of these keyrings and I hope that they'll be appreciated by the recipients. Harry has had one on his book bag since we made them and it seems to have stood up well so hopefully they will be sturdy enough.

I found some sheets of Minecraft puffy stickers on eBay which I thought were very good value. There were several available but I bought mine from this seller and they arrived promptly. I also added some McVities Gold Bars to represent the gold bars in the game.

The sweet cones were the last thing that I put together, and again I was very pleased with them. I'd not tried making sweet cones before but it was a lot of fun and I think they look really good, I'll definitely be making more for parties in the future. I bought a pack of large clear cone cellophane bags and some green curling ribbon, then went on a hunt for green, black and brown coloured sweets.

It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped and I found it difficult to judge quantities, but I got it pretty much spot on (I didn't fill the bags entirely as I didn't them to be too large). I made up 14 cones. For the green sweets I bought a 150g bag of green jelly beans. Black was more tricky, and I ended up with a 250g bag of blackberry and raspberry gums. I had intended to separate out the black ones, but I ended up putting the red ones in too to make sure that the bags were full. Finally most of the cone was filled with Aero Bubbles sweets - three packs of brown chocolate and three packs of mint which are half green and half brown - which were on special offer when I bought them at £1 a bag. On the front of the sweet cones I added one of the spare Minecraft stickers.

Amazon links are affiliate.

Our Transport day - with crafts and activities

Harry's school topic at the moment is Transport, and with a day to fill while Ram was out running and recuperating I thought I'd gather together a few related ideas to keep them busy for a few hours.

We started by making some Transport headbands with cut out pictures for them to wear during the day. I don't know what it is about headbands and crowns and so on, but children really love making them and they are so simple!

I made the headband using a wide strip of black card. The children used white stickers to make road markings down the middle, then glued on some pictures of various different types of transport. These particular pictures are part of a brilliant set of cut out pictures that I bought in Tesco years ago, but see below for a fab resource from Twinkl that would also work really well.

Then we looked through all their toys and books and Harry put together a little display. He managed to find examples of many different types of transport, I was quite surprised by how much we've collected over the years! He loved grouping them all together and arranging them nicely, just like they have in his classroom at school.

One thing that we didn't have was hot air balloons, so next we made a hot air ballon craft. I cut a large balloon shape out of thick cardboard and the children decorated it using bits and pieces from my collage baskets (which we are still using over three years on!) A few pom poms and sequins made their way on as well. Then I printed out a photograph of the two of them well wrapped up in their coats and hats, and they decorated a basket to put themselves in and hang underneath. Although designed as decorations, they had a lot of fun playing with the balloons as well, and flying them around the house!

They really liked the idea of having themselves in the balloon, but you could also print out pictures of favourite television characters, or perhaps make the basket with a sturdy bottom so that some of their little toys and characters could go for a ride.

I can also always find some brilliant resources on the Twinkl website to help support topics that we are looking at. Although some resources require a Premium subscription there are plenty of resources available for free and ones that are suitable for even the youngest children. When Mia was younger she was happy with colouring sheets while Harry worked on more complicated activities, and now she enjoys the pencil control worksheets as well as size ordering and sorting tasks.

Our favourite activity was the Wheels or No Wheels Sorting Activity (Twinkl subscriber resource). There is a sheet with pictures of different types of transport (which you can print in colour or black and white), then the children cut them out and sort them into two boxes - Wheels or No Wheels.

Both children, even Mia, managed really well with this activity, but there are also so many ways that you could use the little transport pictures for other activities too. I remember when Harry was small searching everywhere for pictures of different types of vehicles that he could colour to make matching activities for him, and a sheet like this would have been perfect. You could also use them for the transport headbands as above.

Mia enjoyed some of the Transport Colouring Pages (free download) while I played the Transport Roll, Add and Colour Game (free download) with Harry, which is similar to some of the maths homework that he is currently bringing home from school. I also printed out a Transport Word Mat (free download). I love the word mats, they've been great while Harry has been learning to read and they are really useful if your child wants to write words related to a topic but needs a bit of help with the spelling.

We also did a few worksheets that even Mia could join in with. She did some simple Colour, Trace and Connect pages (Twinkl subscriber resource) and a basic Dot-to-Dot Activity Sheet (Twinkl subscriber resource) and they both enjoyed cutting up and putting together the Transport Puzzle (Twinkl subscriber resource).

Finally, our transport theme inspired me to make a Hama bead photo frame! It's so easy to do that even little ones can make it, and you can add your own embellishments like these little 3D cars. I've also made a few more Hama bead photo frames which you can see here.

If you feel inspired, here you can find the posts about our other themed days:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Under the Sea Day
Dinosaur Day
Australia Day
Roman Day
Disney Frozen Day Beach Day

And some tips on how to hold a themed day at home for children.

How to hold a themed day at home for children

My very first themed day for the children was Space Day. I'm not sure what gave me the idea to start organising themed days, but it may have been because it was the last summer before Harry started school, and I wanted to make the most of our time together at home. I also wanted to find things that both children could do together, not always easy with a stubborn toddler. I spent a bit of time beforehand browsing Pinterest for space themed crafts and activities. I also took a lot of inspiration from the Twinkl website, always my first port of call for themed resources.

The children were so excited to see the breakfast table on Space Day, covered in tin foil and their space themed toys. Space Day was such a success that we continued that summer and beyond with a whole series of themed days - you can find a link to them all at the bottom of this post!

A successful themed day is all about the planning, and it makes any day go much easier if you have a list of activities to keep everyone busy. I make sure that we have everything that we needed in advance, and everything was printed out ready.

Our first activity is often some kind of poster. This is a great activity because it involves painting a large sheet of paper, which children of all ages enjoy. Even better if the weather is nice so you can do it in the garden and it will dry quicker. While the paint is drying you can work on the other elements of the poster. For example, for Dinosaur Day we used these fab free dinosaur colouring pages. Younger children can help with the colouring and older children can cut them out and position them.

Then I try to have some kind of play activity, a sensory activity if possible. For our Beach Day we made sandy play dough together and gathered together a selection of beach related small world play things. For Antarctic Day we made up some fake snow and played in it with the toy cars.

I also like to have at least one craft activity on hand, perhaps with several different elements that can be worked on separately and combined together. For example the paper plate aquarium from our Under the Sea Day has Hama bead fish and a painted paper plate frame.

I also always include a themed baking activity. On Dinosaur Day we made a dinosaur shaped cake, on Antarctic Day we made snowball cake pops. Even if you just make shaped biscuits and ice them in appropriate colours it's still fun.

Finally I make sure that we have a selection of printable activities to do when something quieter is needed. Twinkl is great for this, they have resources on just about any theme that you can think of. For younger children colouring sheets or pencil control worksheets work well, older children enjoy themed work searches or other puzzles. You can find colouring pages on almost any subject online. I also line up a selection of books from our bookshelves which fit in with the theme, however tenuously, and leave them around for the children to browse.

Our themed days have been a lot of fun. The children have really loved them, and they've been educational too!

Our themed days so far:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Dinosaur Day
Under the Sea Day
Beach Day
Disney Frozen Day (a guest post from my sister)
Roman Day
Transport Day
Australia Day

Roman themed day

Our first themed day of the summer holidays! The idea for a Roman day came about after my friend suggested it in a light hearted manner, and I decided that it was actually a very good idea! My children are only 5 and 3 so it was only a brief introduction to a few Roman ideas for them, they'll have plenty of time to learn about other aspects of Roman life when they are a bit older!

Hama bead mosaic

The Romans used mosaics to decorate their homes - tiny coloured pieces of stone placed together to form patterns and pictures. We've been doing so much Hama beading this holiday, so making a mosaic with Hama beads seemed the obvious choice. We looked at some pictures online, and Harry found a banana mosaic that he particularly liked. He used it as inspiration for his own Hama bead mosaic. We also have a guidebook from Fishbourne Roman Palace which we looked through, we definitely need to visit it soon as it's just down the road!

In the past we've also made mosaics with pieces of coloured paper and dyed eggshell mosaics, which would also work well for this theme. I've also come up with some designs for Roman style mosaic borders using Hama beads.

Roman headband

I took a strip of gold cardboard (green would work too) and measured it to fit around the children's heads. Then I taped a strip of double sided tape around it and gave them a bowl of green leaf sequins to stick around it. They were held in place with a strip of normal tape. If you don't have green leaf sequins you could use green or gold paper cut into leaf shapes, or even use real leaves!

Roman costumes

Both children loved the idea of dressing up as Romans, although when it actually came to it they were less keen! Along with their headbands they wore sandals. I found a shawl which made a good toga for Harry when pinned into place over a white t-shirt, and Mia wore a white dress which my Mum bought her on holiday, along with a small scarf. They reluctantly posed for a photo, but I'm afraid that the costumes didn't last long!

Roman play

We have a Playmobil Roman Gladiator Arena set which was perfect to play with today. It's quite large so we don't leave it set up all the time, and when I brought it out the children played with it for ages. I didn't go into the bloodthirsty side of Gladiators, instead I just left them to play with it and they came up with their own games using the figures. When their play was coming to an end I brought out our flat wooden blocks and showed them how to make some straight Roman roads for the people to march down.

Roman lunch

At lunchtime, we ate Roman style lying down! I made a low table with a bit of wood balanced on boxes and covered with the shawl. Then we piled cushions all the way around and set the table. We just ate our normal lunch, I didn't attempt any Roman cuisine, but we did have grapes and plastic wine glasses. The play continued after lunch while I washed up and they set the table again using pretend food and plates from the toy kitchen. I tried to suggest that we all had a siesta after lunch, unfortunately that suggestion wasn't taken seriously!

We also looked at photos of when Ram and I visited Rome a number of years ago (although Harry was more interested in the fact that Ram was a little podgier then than he is now).

Roman printable activities

I found some fantastic resources on-line to help us with the topic. I always turn to Twinkl first, and I wasn't disappointed. Although many of the resources are aimed at older children, there were still plenty that Harry could work on. I printed out a Roman Empire Word Mat (Twinkl subscriber resource) and I printed out several copies of the Roman Empire Vocabulary Matching Mat (Twinkl subscriber resource). I used pages from the Vocabulary Matching Mat to make a simple game for each child. Mia had to match up identical labelled pictures, and Harry had to match up the word with the picture. Many of the words were unfamiliar to him, so it was a great way to increase his vocabulary.

Harry enjoyed the Romulus and Remus Wordsearch (Twinkl subscriber resource) and the Romans Wordsearch (Twinkl subscriber resource) and he also liked the Label a Roman Soldier Worksheet (Twinkl subscriber resource).

Twinkl also have a nice poster to help children with Roman Numerals (free download), and I also printed out for Harry a Romans Timeline Ordering Activity (Twinkl subscriber resource).

Roman baking - Roman cookies

We didn't get around to any baking on our Roman day, but if you are looking for more ideas then I love these Roman Cookies from Ofamily Learning Together, a great way to have some fun with Roman numerals.

We had a lot of fun on our Roman day! We seem to be very busy already this holiday, but I'm hoping to fit in at least one more themed day.

If you feel inspired, here you can find the posts about our other themed days:

Space Day
Antarctic Day
Under the Sea Day
Dinosaur Day
Transport Day
Australia Day
Roman Day
Disney Frozen Day Beach Day

And some tips on how to hold a themed day at home for children.